A Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

Draft Resolutions for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

Attitude Towards the State Duma

(1)theState Duma is a gross travesty of popular representation, since:

(a)the suffrage is not universal, not equal, and not direct, the bulk of the
workers and peasants are practically debarred from participation in the State
Duma, and the ratio of electors from the various groups of the population has
been made to fit in with the views of the police;

(b)as regards its powers and its position in relation to the Council of State,
the Duma is an impotent appendage of the autocratic bureaucracy;

(c)the conditions under which the elections are proceeding make it utterly
impossible for the people really to express their will, owing to the absence of
freedom to carry on agitation, to military repressions, mass executions,
arrests, and police and administrative tyranny;

(d)the government’s sole purpose in convening such a State Duma is to deceive
the people, strengthen the autocracy, make further financial swindles easier
for it, and strike a bargain with the reactionary elements of the exploiting
classes, whose predominance in the State Duma is assured;

(2)participationin elections to the State Duma, while in no way helping to
    develop the class-consciousness of the proletariat or to strengthen and
    enlarge its class organisation and fighting preparedness, is more likely to
    disorganise and corrupt the proletariat, since:

(a)if the Social-Democratic Party participated in the elections, it would
inevitably foster among the people constitutional illusions, belief that the
elections can to some extent truly express the will of the people, and the
notion that the Party is taking the path of pseudo-constitutionalism;

(b)in view of their small number, the shortness of their period of office and
      their special functions, the groups of delegates elected by the workers,
      and of electors, can in no way help in building a really revolutionary
      organisation of the proletariat;

(c)participation in the elections focuses the attention of the proletariat on
the farce being played by the government rather than on the revolutionary
movement that is going on outside the Duma, and concentrates attention on
agitation among small groups of electors rather than on extensive agitation
among the masses;

(d)our participation in the elections cannot facilitate the Social-Democratic
education of the more ignorant sections of the masses who want to take part in
the Duma elections, exclusively in the legal way, a method which the
R.S.D.L.P. cannot at present adopt;

(e)the withdrawal of a section of the electors from the gubernia election
meetings could neither frustrate the convocation of the Duma nor give rise to a
broad popular movement;

(3)participationin the elections in the present political situation will
    compel the Social-Democrats either to step aside, without any benefit to the
    movement, or to

stooPto the position of silent abettors of the Constitutional-Democrats;

Weare of the opinion, and propose that the Congress should agree:

(1)thatthe R.S.D.L.P. must emphatically refuse to
take part in the State Duma;

(2)thatthe R.S.D.L.P. must emphatically refuse to participate in the State
    Duma elections at any stage;

(3)thatthe R.S.D.L.P. must make most vigorous use of all meetings connected
    with the elections to expound Social-Democratic views in general, and
    ruthlessly to criticise the State Duma in particular, and especially to
    call for a struggle for the revolutionary convocation of a constituent
    assembly of the whole people;

(4)thatthe R.S.D.L.P. must also use the agitation about the Duma to acquaint
    the broadest possible masses of the people with all the Party’s views on
    tactics in the present revolutionary situation, and on the tasks arising
    from it.